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Sensual Encounters: Chapter 2 Sensual Encounters Erika Lauren Lindgren Chapter 2 Sight: "And She Prayed One Time Before the Large Image...": The Visual Environment One area of the sensual environment that has received much scholarly treatment is the visual 1 environment; the items and artifacts that were seen by cloistered women. One reason for this is that the extant art and images that constituted the visual culture and environment of medieval religious women are rich in variety and tradition.1 Images in later medieval monastic settings were often "intended to function as instruments of visionary experience, in other words, to induce, channel, and focus that experience,"2 and to serve "as instruments of affective piety."3 As such they were intermediary objects, stepping-stones to be used to achieve a higher goal, whether that was the inducement of visions or mystical union with God. This mediatory function of images in the lives of later medieval monastic women, however, was not the images' sole raison d'être. Like the lyrics of the Song of Songs, these images could be read or used in more than one way. Hand in hand with the utilization of visual images as a link to a higher spiritual state, they served their audience by means of their very material and physical form. They provided those who used them with an opportunity to interact with the object / subject of their devotions and prayers, as well as experience the immediacy of the persons or ideas that the images represented. The specific role of images in devotional activity has generated copious scholarship. In 2 Germany this work has usually focused on the use of Andachtsbilder (devotional images or prayer pictures).4 The consideration of Andachtsbilder came to the forefront of art historical discussions when the connections between material culture and the writings of German female mystics were first noticed.5 Scholars have since developed disparate ideas about the use of images.6 In general, scholars think images were acceptable for private devotional use among women and the laity, and even encouraged in the thirteenth and most of the fourteenth century. But that attitude changed at the end of the fourteenth century, especially among the Dominicans, who attempted to manipulate and control the images to which women of the Order had access.7 By the fifteenth century the use of images by nuns was considered dangerous by Dominican authorities.8 In earlier centuries such individual use of images, as we will see, had been a hallmark of Dominican spirituality. A nun may have used images to contemplate the relationship between herself and Christ, a 3 relationship which is made visually clear in an illuminated letter in an early-fourteenth- century gradual [BVC, ms. 136] from Unterlinden.9 In this initial, Christ is enthroned above a Dominican nun in prayer. The emphasis on her rather large hands in prayer position may indicate the artist's assumption that this was the work of a nun—to pray—while the fact that Christ looks not at the nun or the viewer, but rather toward the text for the first Sunday in © 2008 Columbia University Press www.gutenberg.org/lindgren 1 of 29 Sensual Encounters Chapter 2 Erika Lauren Lindgren Advent, reemphasizes the other occupation of the nun—the formalized prayer of the Office or Opus Dei. Through these two activities, the nun could hope to reach Christ, or at least receive his blessing, as signified by his raised hand. Using devotional artwork a Dominican nun might achieve this goal. Other objects may have been used by the women to focus their prayers or meditations on the saints to whom they had a special devotion. The women used such images to organize their spiritual activities and behaviors. Prayer before such objects focused the women's attention on the spiritual elements that were portrayed before them, and often inspired mystical phenomena such as levitation, translucency, ecstatic trances, visions, and the ultimate goal: mystical union with God. As they are described in the Sister-Books, the scenes portrayed in the artwork that surrounded 4 these religious women gave them a visual vocabulary, a language of religious expression steeped in Christian iconography. They then adopted and adapted these images in both their mundane and their spiritual lives. Other images reinforced the status of the women as members of specific religious communities. This chapter will explore the diverse possibilities that visual images gave Dominican women for spiritual expression as they interacted with this part of their sensual environment. The major elements of the monastic visual environment were sculptures and paintings. These 5 were items that unlike manuscript illuminations were almost always visible. They usually remained in fixed locations, although they were in theory moveable objects that could be manipulated or even broken. Sculpture especially could be used in processions, dressed, and decorated. As explored in the previous chapter, several of the Sister-Books detail the architectural setting of the women's spiritual activities. In addition, they describe objects that were in situ within the communities' spaces. The Sister-Book of St. Katharinenthal is the most explicit of all in mentioning the location of devotional art objects and how they were used by the nuns and lay-sisters. St. Katharinenthal is also unique because of the number of surviving artifacts associated with the house.10 We even occasionally know who commissioned or provided the community of St. Katharinenthal with its art objects (information sorely lacking for many monasteries in this period). For example, one of St. Katharinenthal's chief patrons in its building efforts around 1300 was Martin of Stein, who also gave the house a crucifix, an image of the Virgin, and an image of Saint John.11 Except in cases where imagery and iconography call for a cross-media comparison, this 6 chapter focuses primarily on non-manuscript artwork from Dominican monasteries, especially from St. Katharinenthal. Extant manuscript illuminations from these houses will be considered in the chapter on the textual environment. © 2008 Columbia University Press www.gutenberg.org/lindgren 2 of 29 Sensual Encounters Chapter 2 Erika Lauren Lindgren The Choir While we are aware of the architectural form that many female Dominican monastic churches 7 took, we are less well informed about their decoration. From other thirteenth- and fourteenth- century churches used by religious men and women, we know that walls and ceilings, especially in the choir, were often covered with frescoes or other forms of paintings. At the Cistercian female house of Weinhausen in Saxony a very elaborate decoration program survives.12 The church of the male Dominican convent in Constance, located closer to the female Dominican houses of the Upper Rhine, contained friezes and medallions.13 Most choir spaces seem to have been decorated, but unfortunately few survive in their thirteenth- and fourteenth-century state. Hence we have little evidence of the iconographic schemes and picture cycles to which the women would have been exposed each day. A study of the walls of the Unterlinden church has revealed that the church had elaborate interior decoration, the dating of which is unclear. One small area survives but appears to have been repainted in the fifteenth or sixteenth century.14 The vita of Metzi of Adelhausen informs us that even though such decorative schemes existed, and excited the interest of the monastic inhabitants, they were sometimes viewed with trepidation by certain members of their intended audience. Her vita explains: [O]ne time they had made new paintings in the choir, and she had such an overwhelming desire to see them. But then she firmly restrained herself, wanting never to see them. And God made her worthy concerning this wish, so that on the days when she went for communion, she saw the realm of heaven above her, the entire time that she walked through the choir to the high altar where she received God. And in this way Our Lord exchanged a little fleeting sight for an immensely worthy sight.15 Metzi renounced the sensual pleasure she would have received from viewing the new paintings, not because images were inherently evil, but because they were something she desired. In the author's opinion, they were worthless attempts at achieving a beauty that only God was capable of creating. They would have been pale imitations of God's handiwork. By denying herself the pleasure of viewing them, Metzi was rewarded with a view that brought even greater pleasure because it was in accordance with and obedient to God's wishes. Within these painted choirs were the altars enumerated in the previous chapter as well as the 8 tombs of the community's patrons and sometimes the graves of deceased sisters. These structures were also part of the nuns' visual culture. At most nuns' churches there appears to have been more than one altar, most with more than one dedicatee. At St. Katharinenthal, the front altar and the one in the choir of the nuns' church are supposed to have been consecrated by Albertus Magnus in honor of the Virgin Mary and Saint John the Evangelist. Later, the church contained a middle altar dedicated to the Virgin Mary, Saint John the Baptist, and © 2008 Columbia University Press www.gutenberg.org/lindgren 3 of 29 Sensual Encounters Chapter 2 Erika Lauren Lindgren Saint Dominic. Another altar, located against the wall of the cloister, was dedicated to the Virgin Mary, Saint John the Evangelist, Saint James, Saint Peter Martyr, and Mary Magdalen.16 At Engelthal an altar was dedicated to Saint John the Evangelist, while an additional altar was consecrated in the honor of the Virgin Mary and Saint John the Baptist. None of the medieval stained glass from Unterlinden or St.
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